Possession
by lurknomore
Summary: Nik and Liz pairing. Nik POV. “Love isn't a fairytale, not for a Cassidine. Cassidine love is about possession; it is knowing that she is yours and you are hers, and anyone and everything else can go to hell.”


Possession

Nikolas/Liz.

Rating: PG-13, possible R for dark themes.

"Love isn't a fairytale, not for a Cassidine. Cassidine love is about possession; it is knowing that she is yours and you are hers, and anyone and everything else can go to hell."

Disclaimer: Don't own anything or anyone on GH. Just as well, because I'd probably fire Guza.

Author's Note: Not sure where this came from; not even sure how much the story we're going to get that matches this. But for whatever reason, this little nugget fell out of my brain anyway.

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He can't stop thinking about her.

Even when he is sunk inside Rebecca, she comes to him. Instead he imagines her eyes, darkened with desire, her skin flushed with delicate color, her plush lips under his, and her voice gasping out his name as she fractures around him.

Not Rebecca.

Not even Emily, now.

Elizabeth.

Always Elizabeth. With her porcelain skin, her tangled hair, her slender body that is nothing like Emily's – and the sweetness that is like Emily's but somehow different. Elizabeth has a steel in her that Emily never had. Whether it was always in her, or it developed through the tragedies she faced so young, or the rotten choices she made later, it is there – and he wants it. He wants to sink into her and wrap himself in that sweet steel.

And he will get it. Her. Soon.

Nikolas has always prided himself on being the 'good' Cassidine. Even at his most selfish, he has had scruples. In business of course, but more importantly in the ties he has built – ties of friendship with Elizabeth, bonds of love and honor with his siblings and his mother. The good son; the good brother; the good friend. Helena and Stavros called it weakness, but he has always thought those ties were his strength. Proof that he was better than his unrepentant forbears.

Not anymore.

For the first time in his life, he thinks his father might be proud of what he has become. He is sure that Helena will be thrilled – that she will finally have the grandson she always wanted.

He wants to destroy one woman for hurting him – a woman he admits to himself, at least, he was using as a surrogate for a lost love. And who he is using for an even darker purpose as well.

Because yes, he wants revenge. Revenge for being played for a fool, and for believing that he had found a replacement for his beloved Emily.

But now there is something even more dangerous in play. He wants his brother's woman, who is his friend, and he will have her. He lost Emily to his own foolishness and then to a vicious killer: he will not – he cannot – lose Elizabeth. He will take her, and he will hold her.

It started innocently enough. An impulsive kiss to shock Rebecca and Lucky into understanding the forces they were playing with.

It is not innocent now.

He told Elizabeth once that there had been one time – and only one time – when he had wanted what was in front of him, and not a well-loved and remembered ghost. She had seemed shocked, but he had seen, as well, the excitement and the surrender in her eyes before she kissed him back.

He saw the truth.

Elizabeth wants to be wanted. She craves it, as he craves her.

And he could probably get her because of that desire if he pushed her. He can see how susceptible she is to him- or rather, to the feelings he evokes: want, need, danger… Elizabeth has needs that Lucky cannot or will not fulfill, and she wants to fulfill them with him. And it would be good – dark and hot and oh so good. But it would not be enough, not for long. Because afterwards, she would go back to Lucky and her sons, pretending that she was doing the 'right thing' – until someone else reminded her that she needed more.

That will not do. Not for him.

He has to be more to her than an itch that she scratches.

He thinks that is what is stopping him, more than Lucky. Lucky and his feelings don't matter at all. He should matter. Iif Nikolas were the good brother he always thought he was, Lucky would matter. But he doesn't. Elizabeth is all that matters now. And yet it is Elizabeth herself who is stopping him from taking her. She is why he is taking an Emily look alike to bed and pretending that she is Elizabeth. An imitation of an echo of what might have been – and a harbinger of what will be, if he has anything to say about it.

Because he wants her to crave _him_, not just the feeling of being wanted, or an echo of the danger she got from Ric or Jason.

He wants her to burn for him, the way he burns for her: exclusively, passionately, to the point where she is all he thinks about. He will be her everything. To hell with Lucky, to hell with her sons. She will want only him. He is too much of a Cassidine to settle for anything less.

So he is patiently setting his trap for Elizabeth, using Rebecca as bait.

He can see the trap closing in on her. Elizabeth is jealous of Rebecca, of the way he touches Rebecca, and of his seeming obsession with her. She claims that she is upset that he's, as she calls it, 'giving in to his Cassidine roots'. But he sees the truth in those expressive eyes.

She is angry that he appears to be ignoring what they started. She is jealous that his revenge appears to be more important to him than his desire for her.

But he can see that his 'revenge' excites her, too –and the knowledge that he can be so cruel is drawing her towards him.. Elizabeth is beginning to see that he can give her all that she wants – the light, the dark, the ongoing danger she can't bring herself to admit she craves. She wants that darkness, that focus – and she is furious that he is giving it to Rebecca instead of to her.

Soon, Elizabeth will not be able to deny him or herself any longer. Something will break her, and she will be his.

But it cannot be a single impulse. Elizabeth must choose him – tell him she wants him, that she will give herself to him, that she will leave Lucky. Then he will give her what they both want. And then he will throw away Rebecca without a care. She will have served her purpose, and his revenge will be complete.

But that is ancillary. He wants Elizabeth more than he wants revenge on Rebecca. He wants to steal his brother's soulmate and lock her away somewhere where he, and only he, can have her. Touch her. Make her cry out his name in passion, bear his sons. Once he is sure she is his in every way, he will let her out. Then he will to wrap Elizabeth in the furs and jewels that Cassidines always use to mark the women they claim as their own – to show the world – and most importantly, his brother – that she is HIS now.

He did that with Emily. He thought he was merely giving her gifts that a prince gives his princess. A horse, a ring, a dress; trappings of the fairy tale Emily always wanted.

Now he knows better. Love isn't a fairytale, not for a Cassidine. Cassidine love is about possession; it is knowing that she is yours and you are hers, and anyone and everything else can go to hell. Other possessions mark her as yours to all who dare to challenge you for her. And if fate is kind, you find a woman with the strength and understanding to live in that framework. Sometimes she even flourishes in it, because something in her needs to be that necessary to a man. If you choose unwisely or fate is cruel, she breaks or she runs. Or she dies.

He wonders now how Helena came to be Helena. Was there a time when she wasn't as hard as the diamonds she wears? When she first married his grandfather, was she more like Emily, or more like Elizabeth? Did she turn deadly when Mikkos first lost interest in her, or was she always lethal? Was that part of what attracted Mikkos to her?

And his own mother – what about her was so essential to two such different Cassidine men? If there had been no Luke, would she have stayed with Stavros, or run with Stefan? And in either case would he himself have mattered, to her or to the brother she chose? When she had left, Stavros and Stefan had battled over him briefly and bitterly because he was all that had remained of the woman they both wanted. Stefan won him by default, because Stavros's obsession with Laura trumped his fatherhood.

He is indeed his father's son.

He thinks back to when Helena wanted Elizabeth for him. Did Helena see, even then, hints of the darkness Elizabeth might be able to reach? Was that why she was so against Emily? Or would he have found this more twisted version of love if Emily had lived? Would it have been triggered at some point?

He thinks not, or at least he hopes not.

No – that is a lie.

He doesn't really care about what might have been.

He only cares about what is and what he has determined will be. The rest can all go to hell: Rebecca, Lucky, Helena... they don't matter. All that matters is him, and Elizabeth, and what he knows they will be together.

She will be his, and he will be hers. That's the only truth he needs.


End file.
